Saturday, March 18, 2006

My Perfect Dark Zero review

Say today I thought of posting my review of Perfect Dark Zero. I took a test to get into MN Life College. I’ve done bad in math and memory, but good in reasoning. Score is coming back in 3 weeks. REALLY BORED. I’ve played PDZ for 4 hrs in a role. I can’t handle any longer than that. I already told you want I think because I like games (more when I was younger). I might want to play Dragon Quest 8 but am in the process of getting the 3rd level in Perfect Dark Zero. I feel like an amateur,

As for my personal life. Alone all the time. Won’t kill myself….am mentally stable person. On the computer all day of course. Way too much computer! It's okay for now, but I really should find a job. Maybe my hands will be a catalyst when i am working. I bite my fingers so it's not really different!

Won't go into Toyriffic to spend money on videogames or talk to Evan or that guy that worked there for a year. Made a final decision of saving it all up for Kingdom Hearts II coming out at the end of March. Extremely popular. Note I won Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion from Catharton Electronica for reviewing Project Gotham Racing 3.

P E R F E C T D A R K 0 R E V I E W (the first draft)

Perfect Dark Zero has to be the longest X360 game in development to date. It was revealed at Space World 2000 without in game screenshots than Rare took the project to current generation over 4 years later, but not without porting it to Xbox first. It raised from a 480i game to a 720p one. X360 is capable of 1080p after lots of work. It’s not exceptional, but far from scoring a 6.9. It looks better than the most advanced Xbox game, Halo 2 or Ninja Gaiden Black, so let’s leave it as that.

Joanna Dark still has short hair, but she dies her hair red. I believe they modeled her after a real person this time around because the James Bond FMV shows a real-life woman.

The game has single player and multiplayer deathmatch arenas. Single player deathmatch is an excellent way to brush up on your skills! Enemy bots are just as deadly as the old N64 game and guaranteed to increase your skill for mission mode. Deathmatch arenas are wide open located in tropics zones with buildings to camp out (there are no hidden spaces so yeah won’t be camping for long). It has everything in the game like automatic to pistols.

The AI enemies and allies are pretty good and match my skill level easily so I am not complaining about lack of challenge. I don’t know what the other reviewers are saying, but this game is difficult, but not impossible.

Mission zero is a holographic matrix of the real world where Joanna saves some scientists with some help of an allied infantry. The guys in grey suits are from Dyne Corporation ( bad guys). The game difficulty must be medium running out of ammo is a pesky problem.

n Mission one Joanna is suppose to be stealthy to get pass guards. With one gunshot, every bad guy will gang up on her and the only way out kill them all.

One thing I don’t like about PDZ is the analogue pad’s vertical controls are complete opposite of what I like it to be with no way to tweak it. The game has the controls set so up means down and down means up. Perfect Dark Classic option makes strifing opposite of regular controls. The controls are responsive, but there is no auto aim so if you’ve played Rare’s other games without auto aim…you’re above my skill level, but I don’t care cos I am not you. This game builds onto a really good first person shooter on Xbox. Just not Halo great. I might have to played Xbox first person shooters to be decent at PDZ in my humble opinion.

The rooms have water effects beyond what Xbox is capable of. The lighting effects are pretty good and the enemies look shinier than normal people.

The game uses the successor of the havoc engine we’ve all seen in Halo and Halo 2 called the Havoc Hydracore. It is the only launch title to use Hydracore engine, but more games coming out like Sonic Team’s Sonic the Hedgehog and Halo 3 are using it. The game isn’t glitchy, but there is slow downs and it always runs at 30 frames per second. XBOX360 is technically able to achieve 60 fps if developers had enough time to increase the frame rate. PDZ was coming out for Xbox two years ago.

I must say after playing the Xbox 360, I can see all the jaggies in every Xbox game now. The game uses less anti-analyzing than the console should have to keep slightly above 30 fps. I heard somewhere that GoldenEye ran at a fluid 60 fps so this is a little disappointing. Advanced anti-analyzing (6x, 8x) takes lots of hardware juice. XBOX360 is clearly capable of just 4x anti-analyzing. The textures + resolution make this whole game next generation. Previous generations ran at 480i. That’s not unbelievably high that it looks futuristic, but not too low that PDZ looks last generation. It still looks better than Halo 2 and them games.

PDZ uses the game’s engine for all cut scenes which look like Project Snowblind cut scenes from a 3rd party developer. Speech quality is ultra clear and I played it with two stereo speakers. There is nothing American about this game. Everybody has British accents. Am positive the entire game takes place in Eastern Europe.

Rare decided to make the environments quite large and less linear than what you may typically expect. To help you, you got dynamic "waypoint arrows" appearing on the ground for a brief time leading in a right direction

At least you can cover from crossfire or a spray of enemy bullets in wide open spaces pressing the A button for cover (directly outta the Metal Gear Solid) This is a slight improvement over past fps that used crouch button to hide behind crates. Having its own cover button is small improvement to the genre. The game instantly switches to 3rd person view unless you’re in the process of shooting in first person view. The game has zero camera issues.

Final Score

Graphics 8.5 – Good graphics, but 30 fps and slow down everywhere

Gameplay 8.5 – Halo kicks Joanna in the butt 5 years ago. If Halo wasn’t so revolutionary I say this game plays 2000ish, but Halo is one of a kind.

Sound 8.0 – This black radio gal tells you want to do thru speech, but the problem is she sounds like any young black model. Joanna on the other hand sounds like one of those post-teenage advocate (never seen one). Background music sounds like Perfect Dark-like stereo quality soundtracks and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound support. Mono is obsolete and the Rare didn’t settle for stereo. All audio in here has certain oomph to it.

Replay Value ? – No friends over so I don’t know how long split screen fun will last. It has a nice Co-op mission mode for friends (directly out of Halo).

Conclusion 8.8 (not on average) – On average for silly game, but could’ve been sillier if it was 60 frames per second with auto-aim functionality. My expectations were unusually high for it keep in mind. Recommended for Xbox 360 owners who have Project Gotham Racing 3, Call of Duty 2, and Dead or Alive 4 first.